


Misericordia

by cyanocorax



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“What does he say?’ he asked.<br/>‘He’s very sad,’ Úrsula answered, ‘because he thinks that you’re going to die.’<br/>‘Tell him,’ the colonel said, smiling, ‘that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.”<br/>- 100 Years of Solitude</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Misericordia

**Author's Note:**

> wow it's been a while since i posted anything
> 
> anywhere
> 
> at all
> 
> *spoilers for a game of shadows*

Years later, as he stood upon the gallows and stared out into the mumbling crowd, Sebastian Moran would remember the distant afternoon when his father took him hunting for the very first time.

They had followed the old stone wall running down the center of their estate, from the days when the family still kept livestock in their fields, until they reached the edge of a small wood and the dogs gave chase. He had hit a bird on his first try— saw it fall to the ground screaming. It landed some yards away, and he stood and watched as it rustled about, squawking in pain, dragging one useless wing behind it and forming the oddest of shapes as it twisted to and fro. Then his father had come up from behind him, shouting, “What are you doing, boy? Put it out of its misery, the blasted thing.”

Sebastian recalled lifting his rifle to his shoulder and pointing the barrel at the animal’s breast, but something detained him. Blood was being splattered across his muddy boots; the bird was frantic and trying to run. Wild, crazed eyes. It knew. It knew it was soon to die.

He shot it through the head, a pinched little smile tugged across his lips, the kick of the gun already something his flesh and bones knew and understood. The dogs leapt at his heels, lips peeled back to show their bloody teeth, trampling the pheasant’s ruined carcass into the earth.

His mind revisited that afternoon often. He thought of it when he was in Tehran visiting his father, sucking on a dried date as he watched boys throw stones at starving dogs; when he was in Afghanistan, looking out into the sizzling desert, seeing bodies collapse, one on top of the other, so quickly the hadn’t the time to shut their eyes. He thought of it twenty three years later, sunlight streaming in through an open office window, illuminating dust motes and sparkling chips of chalk.

“You were in India,” the professor told him. “Quite recently. As a boy you spent some time in Persia— your father was the minister, I believe? Yes. Eton, Oxford. Afghanistan. Wounded…” He reached forward and traced a line across Sebastian’s bicep. “Here.”

Sebastian glanced down at the thin streak of chalk upon his jacket, and brushed it away. “Well, sir,” he said. “I expect you’ve been doing some reading.”

“Not the usual kind.” And then he explained how he had done it: the tobacco Sebastian smoked, the way he held himself, the tan of his skin, the crook of his arm.

“Impressive,” Sebastian had conceded.

Moriarty tilted his head to one side and let loose a little smile. “Commonplace,” he said, before extending his hand to take Sebastian’s warmly. “Come. Let us walk.

 

In his jail cell the night before they sentenced him to die, he heard shouts from above where the others were, and the unmistakable slam of body upon body. He stretched himself out upon his cot, hands reaching back to cradle his head.

They would quiet down eventually. He closed his eyes and scratched the side of his face, pressing his fingertips into the bruises there.

Alone. Alone the way ghosts are alone.

 

Standing on the gallows, the bearded man beside him reading his charges from a long, curling slip of paper, Sebastian puffed awkwardly away at his last cigarette and felt the taste glide over his tongue. Not his usual blend, but it’d do. In his mind he was walking through the tall grass, speckled dogs flanking him, gun in his hand. In his mind he stood before a blazing fire, dripping blood across the good silk carpet, and a chalk-dusted hand encircled his neck so fiercely it was almost tender.

He spat the cigarette onto the wood, let it smoke for a moment, then crushed it beneath his heel, just in time for the man to reach the end of the list. “May God have mercy on your soul,” he intoned, and at this, Sebastian laughed.

The sky thirty years ago was much like this one, he thought. Very blue.

They asked him if he’d anything to say. “Oh, I’m alright,” he told them, before they placed the hood over his head.

In the dark, he saw a dozen birds shoot up like rockets.

 

When they were staying at the factory in Germany, Sebastian sometimes went for walks in the surrounding woods, hunting rifle over his shoulder. The professor sometimes joined him-- as far as the train tracks, maybe even farther. Sebastian never shot anything when he was alone, but for Moriarty, he indulged in a game of self display. A deer one day. A hawk another. Single shots through the head, their bodies left to rot in the undergrowth.

“You befuddle me, colonel,” Moriarty said as they made their way back. “What kind of tiger kills for play?”

They paused at the edge of the forest, near the tall brick walls. Moriarty’s eyes glittered.

“A tame one,” Sebastian said at last, unflinching.


End file.
